


Roman Profile

by acollectionofficsandshit



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Best Friends, Dream Sex, F/M, Formula 1, Friends to Lovers, Multiple chapters, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited, Oral Sex, Reader-Insert, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-22 15:13:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30040617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acollectionofficsandshit/pseuds/acollectionofficsandshit
Summary: God, your head was a mess today. Could things possibly get any worse?As it turned out, they absolutely could. Apparently, today and the universe had it out for you, and you really should have just stayed home and made Daniel go to this charity dinner alone. You should have known that saying yes on the first full weekend you’d gotten off in God knows how long was just tempting fate. Instead of being appreciative and spending the weekend in London at your flat, you’d leapt at the opportunity to get away from the city and spend some deeply needed one on one time with your best friend.And now, here you were, in the midst of processing several world view shifting revelations about Daniel, as he nudged your foot with his in a bid to get your attention, both eyebrows raised in question, looking impossibly intrigued.“Anything you’d like to share with the class?”
Relationships: Daniel Ricciardo/Original Female Character(s), Daniel Ricciardo/Reader, Daniel Ricciardo/You
Kudos: 16





	1. Can You Do That For Me?

The quiet that had fallen between you and Daniel in the moments following take off was surprisingly comfortable, and it was honestly a bit of a relief after the chaos of your day leading up to catching the flight. Sitting here like this felt dangerously good, with your feet tucked up under you in the large plush seat while you peered out the jet window and Daniel just a few feet away in the seat facing yours, messing around on his phone, clearly as content and at ease as you were. 

You’d always been good friends, taking to each other without much of a second thought after Max had introduced you two just in passing a few years back at some event he’d invited you both to. The progression from acquaintances to close enough to hang out alone without friends had been just as simple, so lacking in the usual awkward transition stage while you figured out the dynamic that you’d both felt the need to point out just the absence of awkwardness repeatedly to one another. 

So, much like the way you’d become friends without ever really deciding to, you couldn’t really ever pinpoint when you had started to notice that sometimes, entirely unprompted, your thoughts would just drift to Daniel and just the memory of his booming laugh and the way he beams at you when you made a joke would have a small smile tugging at the corner of your lips. You tried to rein in the way your gaze constantly sought him out when he was within eyesight, though it did frequently come in handy that you seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to finding his face in a crowd, where for you, he stood out from the others like the world around him was trapped in one of those old black and white movies but he alone was in technicolor.

Beyond the general fondness and deep admiration you had for him, you didn’t really think too heavily about what it might mean that your chest got tight and your stomach dropped sometimes when he looked at you, giving you a smile so big it nearly split his face in two. You were friends, good friends that were closer than most and you really, really didn’t want to run the risk of ruining the best friendship you’d ever had by listening to the little voice in your head that sometimes whispered _“well what if you…”_

But that’s all it was, you told yourself, it was just a little friendly pull towards him. It didn’t mean anything. You let your thoughts drift, though purposefully steering them away from Daniel, and ignored the urge to take a quick glance at Daniel, just to see what he was up to as he sat quietly in the seat directly across from you. Laying your head against the window, you watched the clouds and endless stretch of sky fly by while the soft noise of the flight buzzed in your ears. As you began to drift off, you did your best to keep your attention focused on what lay outside the plane, rather than on what sat inside of it, since that view was a million times more fascinating and intriguing, but absolutely off limits. 

Try as you might, your tired eyes rebelled in the face of any resolve to not give in to temptation and fell to Daniel’s relaxed form. So, the last thing you saw through sleep heavy lashes was his face, the details slowly dissolving into a blur of warm, golden skin, a tangle of dark curls and impossibly pink lips quirked up in a soft smile. 

_As though your thoughts were unwilling to let go of your current setting and view, the dream that was beginning to take form picked up from where reality had dropped off. Blinking awake, you found that you were still sitting in the chair you’d fallen asleep in but the way you felt was entirely different. Head heavy and limbs feeling strangely hot and achy, you glance up and nearly fall out of your chair at what you see._

_Instead of still sat in his chair where you’d left him, Daniel is standing over you, not saying a word but watching you closely. There is no mistaking the way his gaze is dragging down the length of your body, eyes lingering on the exposed skin of your chest, tracing the line of your legs. All the while, his chest noticeably heaves, the movement betraying the way he’s sucking in heavy mouthfuls of air like he can’t quite catch his breath._

_But before you can move or break the silence, Daniel strikes, catching you entirely off guard. He sinks to his knees on the carpet in front of you in the same moment he grabs your neatly crossed legs and pulls them apart, his hands gentle but firm. He hauls you forward and down in your seat, pulling you towards him until he can comfortably settle between your spread legs, the apex of them parallel with his face._

_Daniel looks up at you then and the grin spread across his gorgeous face is not a familiar one. No, this smile, this version of his smile is wicked and excited and hungry. He doesn’t miss the way your eyes widen and your mouth falls open at the sight of him knelt between your legs with that ravenous look on his face. Slowly, he slides his hands from the back of your knees to your upper thighs, fingers skating up and under the hem of the dress you’d worn to work today. There hadn’t been time to change out of it since you’d had to drive to the airport straight from your office._

_As if on instinct, you lift your hips when his fingers find the band of your underwear and begins to work them down off your hips. You watch in shocked silence, breathing harder as your heart rate picks up and anticipation begins to build in the pit of your stomach, as he pulls the scrap of fabric down and off your legs._

_Daniel doesn’t pay a second of attention to where he tosses your underwear and just winks up at you. He doesn’t give you any warning at all before he pushes your dress up to pool around your hips and buries his head between your thighs. You cry out at the contact, the first drag of his tongue across you, licking a fat stripe up the seam of your wet center. Daniel uses two fingers to spread your folds open, making sure the path of his tongue is unimpeded and wraps his lips around your clit, sucking hard. Your hips lurch forward at the sudden stimulation, the heat of his mouth against your delicate skin burns red hot._

_He fucking smiles into your pussy at the movement, proud of your body’s response to his mouth on you, at the way you’re already soaking wet for him and he’s barely even touched you. His tongue doesn’t stop moving even once, tasing every inch of you that he can- doing so with a thoroughness that tells you just how much he’s enjoying this and that he wants to be here between your legs. That makes you realize you want him there, to keep his face and his fucking sinful, skilled tongue on you just as badly as he does. If not more so._

_The sudden certainty of this realization is only solidified further when Daniel slides two fingers into you and the unexpected but welcome stretch of them has your back arching as far as it can within the confines of this seat. He lets out a choked out moan at the way you’re practically sitting on his face now, the arching of your spine having shifted you even further down in the chair. The reverberations of his moan echoes through your body, white hot pleasure radiating outwards in waves from the spot his mouth is locked around, his tongue flicking your clit back and forth._

_Daniel fingers pause for a moment and as he removes them, you whine pitifully at the loss. He chuckles softly at the needy sound, stopping for just a moment to trace soothing circles on the inside of your thighs, as if reassuring you this will only take a moment. Before you even process it fully, Daniel is grasping you by the hips to slide you more towards him, before hooking your legs over the arms of your chair at the knees. Apparently, you hadn’t been close enough to his face for his satisfaction. Apparently, he wants you entirely exposed and at his mercy, and you certainly were now, spread out in front of him like an open book. But you completely lose any sense of embarrassment at being this vulnerable in front of him, with this much of your body on display, the moment his tongue returns to tasting you, lips suckling at your clit and his fingers find their previous rhythm like he never stopped fucking you with them in the first place._

_You stay like that for a while, his fingers and tongue working in tandem, the combination of the dual assault overloading your brain until you’re just a ruined, whining mess beneath him and the only thought in your head is a broken chant of his name. You’re not entirely certain when that internal repeating dialogue of Daniel, Daniel, Daniel becomes a verbal one, but once it does, you find yourself clinging to the way it feels slipping from your lips. The only thing keeping you anchored right now is repeating it over and over. There’s no denying how right it sounds, his name coming from your mouth, broken and heady and needy._

_Daniel notices when your hips stop squirming and you go limp, so overwhelmed that your body goes boneless to handle it all. He looks up to find your eyes are closed and your lips are slightly parted, soft puffs of breaths escaping you like you’ve been entirely used up. He notices with no small amount of pride that though you’ve fallen silent, you’ve continued to mouth his name, like you can’t help but to cling to it._

_“Open your eyes,” he says. You listen to him, too tired and desperate for his mouth back on you to fight or even hesitate. “I want you to watch me, I want you to see me taste you, I want you to know how I look when I eat your pussy. Can you do that for me?” You can’t help the loud noise you make at that, as you nod your head, the filthy fucking things he’s saying sending you reeling. In a matter of words, Daniel leaves you too helpless to do anything but obey him._

_“Good girl,” the praise makes you whimper, “but you have to stay quiet for me, okay? The pilots are right there and I don’t want them to hear you. The sounds you’re making and the way you’re spread out for me are not things I’m willing to share.”_

_“I’ll be good- I’ll be quiet,” you promise him._

_“That’s my girl. Remember, keep your eyes open, keep them on me.”_

_When Daniel’s certain you won’t look away if he’s not watching you, he returns his face to it’s former place between your thighs, nudging at your soaking core. You have to slap a hand to your mouth to keep in the noise you let out when he replaces his fingers with his tongue and buries it inside you. The hand not desperately trying to suppress the sounds you’re making is now clutching at his hair, the slightly grown out curls at the crown of his head wrapped around your fingers as you grind against his mouth. You’ve never been touched like this before, and certainly never had a man fuck you with his tongue like Daniel is, licking at the tight walls of your cunt like he can’t get enough of you, like he can’t get close enough._

_Daniel presses his face even further between your legs as you adjust to the feel of his tongue fucking you open, until his nose, that impossibly perfect nose with its Roman profile that would have been at home on a ancient coin emblazoned with the likeness of a Caesar of Rome- is pressed against your clit, nudging it with every thrust of his tongue in and out of your cunt. This, above and beyond anything else he’s done to you so far, sends you hurtling head first towards an orgasm. The feeling of it building and cresting in waves in the pit of your stomach is so consuming you feel like you’re beginning to drift outside of your own body._

_That slight separation from the confines of your mind and the pleasure racking your body is enough for a single thought beyond Daniel and the absolutely sinful things he’s currently doing to you, flits across your mind. It shouldn’t be possible for a dream to feel this fucking incredible. Nobody should be allowed to feel this good, not like this. Not when it’s such a deeply erotic experience, riding Daniel’s tongue and his nose with absolutely reckless abandon. Not when his hand not keep you pinned down and spread out in front of him is between his own legs, fingers wrapped around himself while his hips thrust in time with the movements of his tongue in and out of you, shamelessly fucking his own fist._

_It just can’t be possible to experience ecstasy like this. There’s no way anyone is allowed to feel this and survive it._

_But apparently rules, like everything and everyone else in life, are so enthralled by Daniel that they can’t bring themselves to deny him a single thing. Their weakness, your shared weakness, is to your benefit and your detriment. It feels like a point of no return._

You awake with a jolt, your stomach plunging like you’ve just tipped over backwards in a chair, expecting to find yourself lying on the floor. But from what you can tell, you haven’t moved an inch between falling asleep and waking. It takes a few seconds of blinking and staring at nothing for the vivid, sordid details of your dream to come rushing back in. When it does, it feels like the whole world has been flipped on its head. 

Your heart felt like you’d just run a marathon, the sound of the beats so loud you wouldn’t be surprised if Daniel could hear it from- Oh god, **_Daniel._ ** What the fuck had all of _that_ been about? Why in the hell had your brain gone there, of all places? He was your friend, just your friend and you’d never, not in the two years you’d known him once thought of him in any sort of way other than what was appropriate and platonic. 

Before you can catch it, that little voice in your head, like the devil on your shoulder, asks _“or, have you just not let yourself think about-“_ No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. You cut the voice off before the question can go any further, before things can go any further and you’re forced to figure out what the hell it all meant right here, right now when Daniel is sat just feet away. **_Oh fuck. Fuck! Daniel is right there_ **.

The first coherent thought you have after your head devolves into a swirl of paranoia and fear and the fragments of your dream that remind you just how clearly you’d seen what his head looked like between your legs, what his lips looked like wrapped around your- no, no, no, not right now- is not much more pleasant than the guilt now bubbling to the surface. 

Does he know? Does Daniel somehow know what you’d be dreaming of? The panic starts to set in, but you do your best to rein it back in. Sternly, you tell yourself how absolutely ridiculous it is to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown over the possibility that he knows. How could he know? How? There’s no way he could possibly have any idea that dream him had just broken dream you down and put her back together with his tongue and his hands. And his nose, _fuck, his nose._ Seriously, what the hell was going on with you? Who the hell even thinks things like that entirely unprompted? Especially after falling asleep when the last thing they remembered was looking at the face of the person that had now been twisted into some sort of unwanted, unwelcome sexual fantasy?

But maybe he hadn’t even noticed you’d fallen asleep, maybe Daniel was so distracted by sending texts or replying to work emails or doing whatever the hell it was he did on his phone that he had no idea you had slept at all. The only logical place to start to get some idea of if he’d notice wasn’t one you were looking forward to. What if, when you glanced over, he was already watching you? If he was, or if he happened to look over when you looked up, could you even meet his eyes? You didn’t think you’d be able to look him in the eyes for a very, very long time. But you had to know, you had to check. 

Sitting up slowly, your cheek peeling away from the window slightly where it had become stuck and leaving behind a slight mark, you looked in Daniel’s direction and nearly choked. He was still on his phone, a slight smile playing on his lips as he typed out a message. Your reaction wasn’t because your fears had come true and he was watching you with any idea of what had just transpired inside your head but something just as bad, something you hadn’t been prepared for in the slightest. 

Daniel was reclined, his body was sprawled out across his seat, clothes slightly disheveled and out of place from the way he’d been progressively sliding further and further into the chair. You wanted to stomped your feet and whine at how good he looked right now, legs spread wide in a manner that was far too reminiscent of way he’d had you spread out across your chair in your dream, while his powerful thighs were a gorgeous display of corded muscle in those shorts that had already been short enough upon boarding. 

There was so little substance to them, barely falling mid thigh and such a strange fashion choice, you’d teased Daniel about them earlier. But now, they had been scrunched up even further, the folds of the material now held taught enough to make your mouth water, the strong lines of the tattoos on his legs in sharp relief. His shirt was askew too, pulling tightly across the lines of his biceps and the taut tone of his chest and stomach, leaving little to the imagination. You made a mental note to thank Michael for this view. 

Wait, what? Had you really just thought that? You wanted to thank Michael, Daniel’s Michael, for what? There would be absolutely no thanking Michael for anything other than the personal trainer he’d referred you to in London when you’d asked him he could point you in the right direction the last time you’d seen him. He had, of course he had, because Michael was one of the best people you knew and you were endlessly grateful to him for the support and friendship he provided Daniel. He sacrificed a lot for Daniel, dropping everything to go travel the world with his friend, acting as his trainer and coach, by giving him someone he could always rely and trust without hesitation on while on the road, spending most of the year traveling from Grand Prix to Grand Prix and never staying in one place for long enough to get comfortable.

Of the countless number of things you wanted to thank Michael for, the way the new strength in Daniel’s arms and legs had his toned, tanned skin rippling impressively at even the slightest of movements and the way the definition of his abdominal muscles was so considerable you could currently see the outline of his six pack through the thin weave of his shirt, were most certainly not on the list. Or, at least, they hadn’t been. God, your head was a mess today. Could things possibly get any worse?

As it turned out, they absolutely could. Apparently, today and the universe had it out for you, and you really should have just stayed home and made Daniel go to this charity dinner alone. You should have known that saying yes on the first full weekend you’d gotten off in God knows how long was just tempting fate. Instead of being appreciative and spending the weekend in London at your flat, you’d leapt at the opportunity to get away from the city and spend some deeply needed one on one time with your best friend. 

And now, here you were, in the midst of processing several world view shifting revelations about Daniel, as he nudged your foot with his in a bid to get your attention, both eyebrows raised in question, looking impossibly intrigued.

“Anything you’d like to share with the class?” he asks.


	2. You Like Me Difficult

_“Anything you’d like to share with the class?” he asks._

* * *

You nearly choke at the sound of his voice, hearing it made you realize how exactly you recalled its tone and cadence in your head, how dead on your imagined comments were. He kept speaking to you, but you weren’t listening to a word he said, nothing but that voice telling you to watch him, telling you how good you tasted, telling you how if he had his way, he would stay like this, with his face between your legs and his tongue inside of you, for the rest of his life.

“Hello?” Daniel tries, having escalated to waving his arms in the air in front of your face in an attempt to catch your attention when saying your name repeatedly has had no effect whatsoever. He wouldn’t admit it, but it definitely stung him a little that you’d continued to stay lost in thought even as he’d called your name, when normally your name on his lips whispered just once across a room would have you whipping your head around and immediately searching for his face. “Hello, Earth to baby!”

That got your attention, _baby_ got your attention.

“Huh?” you ask him, eyes finally focusing on his face. “What?”

Daniel just looked unimpressed but definitely still intrigued, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees and rest his chin on his hands, studying your face closely. He doesn’t say anything but narrows his eyes, and you can practically hear his thoughts clamoring around in his head. 

“What?” you ask him again, this time a little defensively. He still doesn’t speak, but he does grin at the tone of your voice, not missing the edge to it for a single second.

“Nothing, I’m just dying to know what you could possibly be thinking about that has you this…” he pauses and gestures at you slowly, all encompassing, head to toe. “This worked up.”

“I’m not worked up and it’s nothing,” you say, willing your voice to come out more confident about the lie than you are. It does, but just barely. 

“It was nothing? You were thinking about nothing?” Daniel asks, clearly not believing a word coming out of your mouth. 

“It was nothing.”

“It was something.”

“No, it was nothing.”

“It was something and you know it. Don’t lie to me. You’re a terrible liar and we both know it. Don’t bother lying about that either because I’m not buying it. You should have seen yourself, writhing around in your sleep like a madman,” Daniel says. He watches, smugly as you turned a vivid shade of scarlet. It wouldn’t matter what you said now, no matter how convincing you may sound, the color in your cheeks had betrayed you. 

“Stop-stop looking at me like that,” is all you can manage in response, wriggling in your seat under his watchful, knowing stare.

“Like what?” Daniel asked. _Like you’ve seen me naked. Like you know my traitorous brain has imagined you naked and that, against my better judgement, I enjoyed it._

“Don’t play with me Ricciardo, you know what I mean.”

“I can’t say I do. Please, enlighten me.”

You wanted to throw something at his face, at his stupid perfect face with that flawless nose-

"Really, tell me, how do I look at you?"

“Like you want to eat me.” _What the fuck?_ The second the words were out of your mouth you wanted to forcibly collect them out of the air and shove them back down your throat. 

Daniel, on the other hand, looks like he’s going through the five stages of grief in a 30 second time span. He’s looking at you blankly, eyes wide and lips slightly parted, completely caught off guard. 

“I wasn’t?” he says, a little lamely, like the two words are all the denial he seems capable of mustering up. But even with the half-hearted effort he puts into his denial, it’s still enough to make you question an assessment you’d been almost certain of a second before.

_‘Great, I’ve escalated from sex dreams to projecting on him all in the space of a few minutes’_ is all you can think. But there was no point to backing down now, the words were out there, the proverbial line had been crossed. 

“And I wasn’t doing anything weird in my sleep,” you toss back at him. 

“Oh, but you were. You absolutely were. I thought you were going to slide out of your seat and onto the floor.”

“I was not,” _I probably was_ , you concede to him inside your head but honestly, you’d die before you admitted that to him.

“You know, I looked up from my phone to find you completely passed out, like a dead to the world level of asleep. It was hilarious at first but then you started smiling, like a complete maniac. And then” the flush on your face returns with a vengeance because the picture he’s painting is far too easy to believe to be anything but the truth. “HA!” Daniel practically shouts, making you jump a little. He’s pointing at your face looking extremely gratified. 

“What?”

“You turned that color! You were that color, you turned bright red, while smiling in your sleep. Who smiles in their sleep? Psychopaths?” he’s joking, he’s just being Daniel and teasing you like he always does but you can’t help the urge to find something to throw back at him.

“Do you smile in your sleep?” is all you can come up with and it feels lame coming out, but it makes him laugh.

“How is this about me now? Would you stop being difficult?”

“You like me difficult.” It doesn’t come out how you meant it to, but it still feels like a win when it’s Daniel’s turn to look sheepish, a slight pink tint on his cheeks.

“This is what I’m talking about!” he’s scrambling to recover and you both know it. “I mean it. Stop being difficult and tell your friend Daniel what you were thinking about because you had one hell of something going on upstairs.”

Fuck it. You’ve already made enough questionable comments in the course of this short conversation to make keeping up pretenses any longer feel pointless. Might as well just lean into it, see if I can bluff my way out and hope he forgets. 

“Well, you can tell my friend Daniel,” you put emphasis on his name, taking up the strange sentence pattern he’d used, “that maybe, just maybe, there was one hell of something going on upstairs. Something he might even have enjoyed hearing about.” Daniel beams at you when you make the admission, but you hold a finger up and wag it at him, warning him not to get ahead of himself. “But I’m not telling him what it was. Ever.”

* * *

The ride to the hotel is relatively quiet, Daniel staring out the window in an uncharacteristic silence. You’re a little worried you took the teasing too far and, knowing it was a ridiculous fear to have but still worrying nonetheless, you were afraid he’d somehow know what you were talking about. _‘There was one hell of something going on upstairs. Something he might have enjoyed hearing about’_ Were you too obvious? Had he figured it out? Did he hate you? Was that why he wasn’t speaking to you-

“Spiraling again, are we?” Daniel asks, making you whip your head around so fast you crick your neck. 

“Maybe?” you offer and laugh a little nervously. “But when am I not?”

“True,” Daniel laughs in response. You feel a little of the tension in your chest lessen at the sound. He wasn’t annoyed with you at all, he was probably just thinking about one of the millions of other things going on in his life right now that have nothing to do with you. You were being ridiculous you told yourself, he’s probably already forgotten all about your comment. “You know what would make you feel better?”

“What?” 

“If you told me what you were dreaming about on the plane,” he says with a cheeky grin. You pout at him, shaking your head. So much for having forgotten about it already. You should have known he’d be like a dog after a bone about it until you finally told him. Not that you have any plans of ever letting him find out. You tell him as much. 

Daniel just rolls his eyes and promises he won’t be dropping it anytime soon.

* * *

When the taxi arrives at the hotel and the bellhop comes rushing forward to collect you and Daniel’s bags, there’s no ignoring the fact that numerous eyes are on the two of you, carefully taking notice of the Formula 1 driver who’s just arrived. 

You would think that after a year and a half of being Daniel’s friend, and spending a year of that actively going out in public with him, that you would be used to the attention. But you most certainly were not. It was extremely unsettling to be in public and have a room watching you, whispering behind their hands, the rudest of them pointing at Daniel. You knew that for the most part, they didn’t even notice you were there, but that didn’t stop you from feeling uncomfortable and put on the spot.

Of course, Daniel hardly notices the attention the two of you are getting, and he doesn’t even look up at the loud, inconspicuous sound of a phone camera going off at full volume, but you do. He notices that though, the way you flinch at the sudden clicks that echo off the cobblestones of the hotel courtyard. Daniel catches your eye and then jerks his head just slightly towards the floor, directing your attention downwards in time to catch the index finger of his right hand and tap out three quick beats on the palm of his left hand. You know the meaning, it’s the signal Daniel had invented months into your friendship, a silent way that he can ask clearly ‘ _are you okay?’_ when you’re in public and your anxiety at the crowds and attention threatens to send you into a panic attack. 

It wasn’t strictly necessary, it would have been just as easy for him to ask you, but Daniel had been insistent that this would be how he’d ask and how you’d answer because, as he had put it, it was your private business that no one else was entitled to overhear. The signal worked just as well across rooms if you got separated from him and he wanted to know if you needed to be rescued as it did in public like this, where people often took pictures. 

Though Daniel itched to reach out and take your hand in his so he can remind you that you are fine and he’s right there and that it’s entirely normal to feel anxious right now, _God knows he got anxious sometimes too_ , but it just wasn’t worth the added risk and stress. He felt bad enough that people were taking pictures of you when you weren’t the famous one, and the last thing he wanted to do was to put you through the intense scrutiny that would inevitably come if the two of you were photographed holding hands.

Daniel didn’t think he’d mind it himself though, if people thought that the two of you were together, and he wouldn’t have been half as worried about finding ways to avoid that assumption if he didn’t hate that a repercussion of being around him, of being his friend, was causing you so much pain and distress. It helped that he liked the signal as much as he did. 

He’d found that he relished the secrecy of it, the way a quick tap on the palm of your hands made him feel closer to you when you weren’t free to communicate openly and that it was something that was just yours and his to share, something that no one was privy to. It also made him feel a little less helpless, especially when all he wanted to do was tuck you under his arm and keep you safely within his grasp. Daniel knew he didn’t really have any right to feel this protective of you, that the drive he felt to pull you close and sooth away the nerves wasn’t coming from a platonic place.

So instead, he’d invented the system and let you think what you wanted about his motivations. 

And so, you did, and he didn’t say a word about it. You knew he felt guilty about the attention he brought with him and the fact that it spilled over onto you simply because you were around him, and it was something that he apologized for more frequently than he should have. 

But he never listened when you insisted it wasn’t his fault, which it wasn’t, not when he couldn’t help the fact that people stopped and looked at him. The last thing you wanted was for Daniel, or any of his fans, to think you resented them for being excited to be around him. Shit, you could appreciate the sentiment, especially when more often than not you felt the same way they did. Being around him was exciting and exhilarating, and he was more than worth stopping and staring at. 

Daniel doesn’t stop walking, only acknowledging the people watching with a quick but sincere smile, slowing the paces of his steps as the two of you cross the courtyard heading for the massive glass doors of the hotel’s front entrance. You know what he’s waiting for, and that he’ll stop walking if you don’t respond soon. It’s one tap for yes, two taps for no. 

There’s no need to get Daniel’s attention first, like he’d done for you, not when he’s watching you like a hawk out of the corner of his eye. You tap just once on your palm, count to 10, then repeat the motion. It was part of the system to confirm a yes, and according to Daniel, it was absolutely vital you waited the allotted amount of time before the second tap so that there would be no miscommunication. It was definitely a little over the top, but, as neurotic as it may have seemed at times, you loved how much effort and consideration Daniel had put into the whole thing. And there was no denying the usefulness of the system. 

Daniel gives you a quick grin at your replied _yes, I’m okay_ , his pace returning to normal as you cross the threshold into the lobby. 

“I know you said you were fine, but do you want to come with me to check in? Or do you want to just find a place to sit down and wait. It shouldn’t take long,” Daniel asks, his voice lowered slightly. In the past you’ve opted to wait back, letting him check in or ask about the reservation by himself, so as to avoid the whole ‘oh my god, you’re Daniel Ricciardo’ reaction that happens regularly, even at higher end establishments like this weekend’s hotel. But, oddly, and in contrast with how you felt just a second before, you find that you’re anxious at the prospect of being separated from him just now and that you’d much prefer staying by him. 

“I’ll come with you,” you say, shrugging at him, “might as well.” Daniel raises his eyebrows in surprise, but he doesn’t say anything, just jerks his head in the direction of the front desk. “Can you check in on your phone or something?” you ask him, “surely that would be an option?” Maybe you could find a way to avoid this step all together. 

“I don’t know, it probably is but this is just easier,” Daniel replies, shrugging his shoulders. “People are easier to deal with. Plus, I’d like to have a physical copy of the room key, so I’d have to ask the front desk for one anyway.”

“Surely, they wouldn’t make you check in? Like, there must be some sort of V.I.P guest check in process for privacy, where they can just bring the door keys up to you?” Daniel gives you an unamused look at that, clearly unimpressed by the questions. You throw your hands up in mock surrender. “I’m not saying we should do that, this is fine! I’m genuinely just wondering! I know you hate that type of thing.”

“I just don’t see the point in demanding special treatment. I’m just as capable of checking in at the front desk as anyone else.”

“I know you are! That’s not what I was getting at, Daniel,” you mumble but are saved from his response by your arrival at the front counter. You step back for the check in process, letting Daniel handle the specifics, watching as he hands over identification and makes pleasant small talk with the very pretty woman manning the desk. You feel her glance at you, eyes scanning you head from toe, not bothering to hide that she’s trying to figure out if you and Daniel are together or **_together_ **. 

Shamelessly, you slide just a little to your right until you're partially hidden behind Daniel. He looks up from the computer screen the woman is showing him at the sudden movement, glancing back at you just to judge where you’re standing and then he moves just a touch to his left, his body now completely between you and the employee. Peeking over his shoulder, you’re just in time to watch her quickly rearrange her face into a professional, polite mask, abandoning her attempt to suss out Daniel’s relationship status so suddenly that he must have given her one hell of a look. 

“Thank you, I hope you have a wonderful stay!” the woman beamed at Daniel, pointedly ignoring you as you stepped out from behind him.

“Thank you,” Daniel replied not unkindly, though his voice lacked its usual exuberance. 

“You’re welcome, Mr. Ricciardo. If there’s anything else we can do for you, please,” she leaned forward slightly over the desk, chest on display, “don’t hesitate to ask.”

Daniel balked in the face of her aggressively forward behavior. He turned to you, scrunching his face up in horror. Daniel Ricciardo was not a man who often had nothing to say, the man could find a witty response for every occasion, and yet here he stood absolutely speechless. You couldn’t help but to snicker at him, enjoying the sight of him cowed into silence. The woman visibly stiffened at the sound, looking absolutely affronted when she heard your laughter, obviously taking it personally. 

“I’m sorry!” you told her, actually feeling a little guilty for the misunderstanding that wasn’t really a misunderstanding since you were partially laughing at the way she’d batted her eyes and done her best to give Daniel an eyeful of her chest. Of course, ever pleasant and apparently rapidly recovered Daniel felt the need to clear it up too, forgiving her aggressive behavior in a split second.

“Really, she- it- wasn’t at you, she was laughing at me. It was because-“ he tried before trailing off, struggling to find an explanation. At this point, you’d marked the entire interaction a loss and decided to throw caution to the wind. 

“Because I think you broke him,” you suggest, making Daniel choke as he tries to usher you away from the woman, in the direction of the elevators. “Bye!” you call loudly back at the woman and wave. 

“Stop bullying the employees,” Daniel says, trying and failing to be serious, letting out a loud bark of a laugh. “Enough,” he says teasingly, then shoves your copy of the room key into your hand with a quick “remember only one of us is allowed to lose the key and it’s my turn.”

“You’re a grown ass man but okay,” he shrugs his shoulders at you as the two of you step onto the elevator. He waits for the elevator doors to close before he opens his mouth. 

“You broke him? Really?”

“What? She did! You whipped your head around at me fucking terrified absolutely speechless! She definitely broke you!” 

“Oh my god,” Daniel buries his face in his hands, smothering his laughter, “I can’t believe she did that. I can’t believe that just happened.” 

“If you need anything, anything at all Mr. Ricciardo,” you say, trying to replicate the flirt way she’d said his name,

“That actually sounded like her,” Daniel replies, sounding surprised, “I’m impressed you could hear her so well while hiding behind me.”

“Oh, fuck off,” you shove playfully at his side, “you let me!”

“I did,” Daniel acknowledges and pushes you back, though he’s considerably gentler than you had been. “She was not happy you were there; it seemed the safer option for everyone,” he teased. The elevator doors ding, announcing the arrival on your floor. Daniel steps out of the elevator and strides down the hall to the right, leaving you to scurry after him, trying desperately to match his wide strides.

“They’re never happy I’m with you,” you tell him, not bothering to elaborate on who they are. He knows who you’re talking about, even if he tries to deny it. 

Everywhere Daniel goes there’s girls that approach him, that flirt and tease and make eyes at him, in a seemingly never-ending parade. He’s always polite and he’s always receptive but you’ve never once seen him accept an invitation to dance or save a phone number scrawled on a cocktail napkin and slid across the table to him. It would be funny how consistently Daniel shuts them down, if they didn’t always seem to notice you for the first time after he does it and suddenly feel the need to blame you. But at this point, you’d dealt with it enough you had long since learned to take a page out of Daniel’s book and pay them no mind. 

It didn’t stop the nagging voice in the back of your head that said it was weird he never saved a phone number or kept a party invitation, no matter how stunning and funny and sweet the girl was, the same voice that was hopeful maybe it meant what you wanted it to mean, maybe he did-

“So!” Daniel says excitedly, yanking you out of your head and back down to earth for the second time today. At the very thought of the first time, you feel your face getting hot and you quickly drop your eyes to the floor, suddenly eager to look anywhere but Daniel’s face. You’re so busy studying the carpet beneath your feet, you barely manage to stop walking when he does. When you force yourself to look up, Daniel is standing in front of a set of double doors, bouncing on his heels excitedly, a huge grin on his face. 

“Okay, what did you do?” you ask, crossing your arms across your chest, ready to hear what he could have possibly cooked up that has him this excited. 

“Woah, woah. Why do you instantly assume I’ve done something wrong?” he demands, face falling a little. 

You shrug at him, hoping the smile you’re giving him reminds him you’re only teasing. “Force of habit? Survival instincts? Extensive experience from traveling with you? Something’s kept us alive this long and it certainly wasn’t you.”

“Hey, I’m trying to do something nice here! You’ll like it I promise,” he presses his hand to his heart in a solemn oath, “it’s just the last time I stayed here, I kept thinking how much you’d like it,” Daniel shrugs like it’s nothing, like the words didn’t just knock the breath out of you.

“You were thinking about me the last time you slept here?” you question him, trying to figure out if he intended for his words to have come out how they sounded.

“It’s a long story, I’ll explain in a minute, preferably not standing in the hall like a pair of idiots.”

“Okay, fine! Show me then!” 

“If it’s not as great as I remember, I’m sorry-“

“Daniel, stop overthinking it and show me the room,” you say, gesturing for him to open the door.

“Show you the suite,” he corrects, “it’s a suite.”

“What? Really? It’s that important that I use the correct terminology?”

“Yes, it is. That’s the first step.”

“There’s a first step? What’s the second step? Why are there even steps involved?”

“Because I can’t just grant you access to the suite,” Daniel says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “There’s a process and you have to respect it.”

“You literally just said this was a surprise for me,” you point out, trying to see a way around him. You have an inkling of what he’s going to say, and you are not looking forward to it in the slightest. 

“That’s beside the point. The second step is that you have to answer a question to be allowed in.”

“What, like this is your secret clubhouse or something?”

“Yes, exactly like that. But instead of a password, it’s a question.”

“Fine, go ahead.” 

“What?” 

“Go ahead, ask your question.”

“Oh, well I didn’t think it was going to be that easy.”

“What, you were prepared for us to bicker about it in the hall for a couple hours?” you ask, arching an eyebrow at him. Judging from the sheepish grin on Daniel’s face, that was exactly what he’d be expecting.

“Honestly?” he asks and you nod, “that’s exactly how I thought this was going to go.”

“Then why institute the whole secret clubhouse routine in the first place?” Daniel just shrugs.

“It’s fun?”

“It’s fun?” you ask, a bit reproachful. He nods. “Happy to know this is how you get your rocks off, Ricciardo.”

“Hey, different people, different strokes. You know, don’t knock it till you try and all that,” Daniel says and you snort.

“Whatever you say, I’m not in any position to judge,” the way his eyes widen at your throwaway comment tells you immediately it was a mistake to say it and that his mind is already moving a million miles a minute trying to figure out exactly why you don’t have a right to judge. You hurry to change the subject before he starts coming to conclusions and you have that to combat that on top of everything else. 

“What’s your question?” your words snatch Daniel out of whatever weird headspace he’d been lost in a moment before and he still looks a little daze, but your sudden willingness to play the game he’s cooked up earns you one of his signature, face splitting grins. He’s too excited by the prospect of the game to see your compliance for what it was, an attempt to lure him into a false sense of security, in the hopes he’ll slip up and you can wriggle your way into the room under his arm. “What’s the cost of admittance?” 

“The price to get in the door is that you have to tell me what your dream was about on the plane.” You roll your eyes at him, _how predictable._

“That’s not a question,” you point out, and it’s Daniel’s turn to roll his eyes. 

“Fineeeeeee, I’ll ask it in the form of. Who were you dreaming about? Because based on the faces and sounds you were making, it was definitely about someone.”

“I’m not telling you anything.”

“Then I can’t let you in the room,” Daniel says, shrugging like the matter is entirely out of his hands.

“You cannot actually be serious about this.”

“Serious as a heart attack, I’m afraid,” he replies in a mockingly serious tone.

“Daniel! Come on,” not proud of the fact you’re whining at him like a child who isn’t getting their way, but too ready for this to be over to really care. 

“Tell me and I’ll let you in. It’s that simple.”

“Ugh,” you huff at him, then pretend to give in to his demands. “Fine,” you gesture for him to lean in, as if you’re about to whisper the answer in his ear. Daniel humors you and lowers his head to your level, as you watch closely, waiting until he’s moved just enough out of the door frame that you have a slightly decent chance of being able to slip past him. 

He gets closer than you mean to let him, leaning forward until the two of you are sharing the same space, breathing the same air. You should have stopped him seconds ago but there’s a tightness in your chest that doesn’t want to give up being so near to him just yet.

“Yes?” Daniel asks quietly and you can feel the heat of his breath on your neck. You try to stop the shiver that skates down your spine but it’s too late. He didn’t miss the way your shoulders rolled back, the way you quivered the second the warmth of his words brushed your skin but neither of you acknowledge the way your body reacted to his.

“Closer,” he listens, completely believing you’re about to tell him about the dream. You cup a hand conspiratorially around your mouth and whisper in his ear. “Bite me,” the words are barely out before you’re sliding clean under his arm and straight into the waiting hotel room behind him. The grin you give Daniel when you spin around to face him is a genuine one, if only because you truly hadn’t expected that to work at all. 

But Daniel is a sight to behold, having turned to follow you in the room and now standing in the still open doorway with his arms folded across his chest, leaning a shoulder into the frame. There’s something about the positioning that feels so… predatory. Like he’s assessing his prey, sizing you up before going in for the kill.

“Where'd you have in mind?” he asks coolly, like it’s the most obvious thing to ask, and for a moment, Daniel looks like he really does want to hear what your answer would be. But then the look is gone as quickly as it appeared and all Daniel does is wink when you give him the finger. 

As he finally abandons the doorway and enters the room, the quiet click of the door as it swings shut behind him somehow manages to send heat blazing through your very center, the crackling warm feeling of which is far too similar to the one evoked at his hand in your dream for it to be anything other than a warning of how quickly the tides are changing. 


End file.
